Diane Keaton Reveals How She Helped Al Pacino Get Cast in 'The Godfather' (Exclusive)

etonline.com:

Al Pacino didn't play Michael Corleone in 1972's. However, Diane Keaton says that producers almost went a different direction — until she was cast in the film.Keaton recently spoke with ET's Nischelle Turner, while discussing her new film, and she reflected on her iconic career filled with beloved and uniquely quirky characters.Going back to the very beginning of her film career, Keaton remembered how she was cast in — and how little she ever expected to land the role that went on to be so vitally important to the film and its legacy.«I auditioned for having never read it and I knew nothing about it, and just was there, I was standing there like every other woman,» she remembered. " I didn't know what the hell I was there for.

And they cast me in that role!«While she had been cast, the producers and filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola were still looking for the right actor to play Michael Corleone, the reluctant heir to the Corleone crime family and beating heart of the entire movie.»Nobody wanted Al Pacino.

They didn't want him to play that part, and I had already been cast," Keaton recalled. «I had been cast before Al Pacino in!

Is this not weird?»«So I was standing there and they brought him up when I was standing there and we worked together in front of [the producers], and they gave him the job,» she continued. «Do you believe that?